problem with installing a CD drive on a 286

[wolfie]

i have been having some bad luck trying to install a internal cd drive on my 286 and so i tried installing an external drive. the drivers for the external drive load successfully but i still cannot access the drive. i know i'm missing something so any help is apreciated. i got some pictures.
thanks

 

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you load MSCDEX?

 

[wolfie]

i think it does it automatically. i just checked th autoexec.bat file and i see c:\mscdex.exe /d:aspi_cd /m:3 /v

 

[modem7]

I see the error 'Not enough drive letters available' appearing.
Refer to the 'Common questions' section at the bottom of http://www.computerhope.com/cdromd.htm

 

[wolfie]

thankyou modem7. that solved the problem. i can now access the drive from dos and win 3.1:D. mabe this was the problem with the internal drives. this has made my day. this will make transfering files to my 286 simpler.

 

[modem7]

The screen shots also show a potential problem:

SMARTDrive loads (and goes resident) and then MWCache loads, but MWCache is displaying "Remove SMARTDRV ...".
Maybe MWCache is aborting because it found SMARTDrive active. I don't know - I'm not familiar with DR-DOS.

But if MWCache is not aborting and is going resident, you will have two drive cache programs active. That could be a problem.

 

[wolfie]

do i need smartdrv or can i remove it. i'm not too picky. i have a working cd drive on my 286 and as long as it keeps on working i will be happy. my next project will be to try writing a cd with my 286. now that will be some fun:smile:.

 

[modem7]

do i need smartdrv or can i remove it. i'm not too picky.

NWCache and SMARTDrive basically do the same thing - caches disk reads to increase performance.

Having a very quick look on the Internet, it appears that NWCache is better than SMARTDrive. I guess that SMARTDrive was included in DR-DOS in case some software/hardware had a problem with NWCache.

So yes, I suggest that you remove the command to start up SMARTDrive.
If there are DR-DOS experts out there who disagree, please comment.

 

[Lord Moz]

What does your LASTDRIVE statement read in your config.sys?
From the error message at the bottom of the pic, that would be the first thing I would check.

If you've already played with that, I'm not really sure what else it might be.
Can't think of anything else that would give that error.

Good luck,
__
Trevor

 

[modem7]

What does your LASTDRIVE statement read in your config.sys?
From the error message at the bottom of the pic, that would be the first thing I would check.
If you've already played with that, I'm not really sure what else it might be.
Can't think of anything else that would give that error.

The subject symptom was fixed (see post #5). What's happening now is some discussion on NWCache/SMARTDrive.

 

[wolfie]

smart drive came with windows 3.1 i believe. nwcache was not starting. i disabled smartdrive and nwcache started to work after a rebooted. everything seems great now. thanks for all the help. i knew it had to be something small that i was missing.